


Love is watching someone die

by uncontrollablesnark (orphan_account)



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-16
Updated: 2012-09-16
Packaged: 2017-11-14 08:46:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/513417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/uncontrollablesnark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One-shot. Sometimes, battles don't go to plan. Tony is fatally wounded, and Bruce is the only one there. Subtle Bruce/Tony. M for language, just in case.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love is watching someone die

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't the most polished of works...was originally written as a fill for a kink meme prompt, way back. Feedback and constructive criticism is greatly appreciated.

Bruce knows from the moment Tony lands beside him that something is wrong. He does not know how, and he does not know why, but he knows, instinctively, and suddenly he is fighting the very real urge to panic. _Stay calm. You’re overreacting._

When Tony does not speak, still crouched in his suit, the knot of worry, ever-present in his throat, swells, threatening to engulf him. There is a war within him, but he has to stay calm. He cannot help Tony if the Other Guy surfaces. But still, the worry eats at him. No amount of battle, no wounds – and there have been many – have caused Tony to be so silent. At worst, he has at least been animated enough to seek a quiet place and a bottle of something strong. But always after a battle, never during, like now. During, Tony is always Iron Man; invincible, strong, sarcastic and snarky and brimming with witty commentary.   _Stay calm, Bruce. Maybe he’s just in shock._

“Tony?” Bruce approaches him cautiously, laying a hand on the suit’s exterior, more out of habit than out of any real purpose. When the Other Guy is unrequired in battle, Bruce is their makeshift field medic. He’s the only man for the job, really – at little risk of accidental harm or death, and handy with medical supplies. There’s barely any point, though. The instruments he can take into battle are of little real assistance – small injuries can wait, and the life-threatening ones are insurmountable with the supplies Bruce has at hand.

Tony groans a little, pushing Bruce away, and sinks to his knees in the suit. He eases his visor up, revealing a face far too pale to be healthy. Tony’s cheeks are sapped of colour, and his lips have taken on a greyish tint. “Give me a minute,” he croaks to Bruce, and starts to disassemble the suit, slowly, without any of the automated flourish of usual. When he removes the chest piece, his entire body shudders and his lips give way to a noise not entirely human.

“You okay?” Bruce turns to Tony with concern. The other man is hunched slightly, brow furrowed with pain, hands clutched to his abdomen, and there is something dark seeping between his fingers and dripping slightly on the concrete. Bruce’s insides turn, and he recognises his nightmare, all too real before him now. _No, Tony. Don’t do this to me._  

“Oops,” says Tony eloquently, and then he is retching into his helmet on the ground before him, coughing up sticky clots of blood that spatter like flecks of crimson jelly across the cracked pavement at his knees. When he emerges, he is even paler than before.

“Shit. Fuck.” Tony’s voice is hoarse with pain. He sways, and Bruce lunges forward to catch him ungracefully, as gently as he can muster, lowering the other man to the ground as his heart picks up pace. There’s so much blood, more than Tony’s hands can hold in. Bruce gently prizes them away, and stares at the wound beneath. Three parallel gashes tear Tony’s abdomen, stretching from hipbone to ribs, and Bruce is sure that without the blood that is pulsing from them, he would be able to see right through the other man to the concrete at his back. He pushes the tide of emotion away and steels himself, tearing off his shirt and attempting to pack the wounds with it, and Tony winces and shudders violently, and spits flecks of blood at the ground beside him. It’s useless, Bruce knows, but he has to try.

“Tony, you need a hospital,” he babbles, overwhelmed by the sheer quantities of blood. “I’m going to get help. Stay here, and _stay alive.”_ He rises, calculating the distance, and Tony’s hand finds the leg of his pants, tugging feebly as it shudders like a leaf in a gale.

“Bruce, there’s no point.” His voice is a hoarse whisper. 

Bruce can’t meet Tony’s eyes. He can’t face them right now. Can’t face it being the last time he might see them still lit from within, their usual fire tainted with pain but still present somewhere behind those dark irises.

“But you’ll die,” he whispers, and his voice breaks mid-sentence, the last word barely choking from his lips.

“I know.” Tony is surprisingly calm, but when Bruce finally meets his eyes, they glisten with unshed tears, and with something else, something that Bruce has seen so many times before, in patients and hopeless cases, but never in Tony, not even at his lowest. _He knows._ It splinters something inside of him, something quiet and unobtrusive and utterly essential to his continued being, and he vaguely registers his heart breaking as he stares at Tony. He wonders why the realisation keeps breaking on him, every second a stab of agony as he realises over and over again. This is it. There is no surviving this.

“Stay with me.” Tony is becoming so quiet, and Bruce sinks to his knees beside him, cradling the other man’s head and stroking his hair gently, leaning forward to catch every last word. Tony is crying now, quietly, and so is Bruce, and their tears intermingle and run down to join the blood that saturates Tony and yet still pours forth, though it must meet its end, and he, his, eventually.

“It’s never felt like this, before,” Tony whispers, and Bruce can barely hear the words.

“What hasn’t?”

“Dying.” And Bruce is reminded all at once that this is not the first time that Tony has been dying, has been lying on a cold floor somewhere feeling the light fade and the fire extinguish, and what else? Did he welcome it? Was he scared? There is so much that he does not know about Tony, and will never know, because while this is not the first time that Tony has been dying, Bruce knows in his heart that it will be the last.

“What’s different?” he whispers back, if only to keep hearing Tony’s voice for just that little bit longer. Tony is silent for a moment, and despite the quiet sounds of his labored breathing, Bruce is afraid that the moment has come, far too soon.

“No-one has ever stayed with me before.” Tony croaks, and Bruce feels his tears, though never subsided, begin anew. “Granted, most of the times, I never let anyone. But it’s nice, in a bittersweet way. To be with someone I love.”

“Tony, don’t leave me.” _I love you._ He doesn’t have to say the words. They both know they’re there.

Tony chuckles sadly, quietly, wincing. “I don’t want to.”

Bruce leans forward, seeking silent permission, and their lips touch for the last time. It is quiet, chaste, the simplest and sweetest of their kisses, and it is goodbye. When Bruce draws away, Tony gives him the faintest ghost of a smile, the last he will ever give, and then all too soon, he is gone, and Bruce is alone on the cracked pavement of a street in Manhattan, cradling a bloodied, battered body and bleeding quietly from a broken heart. He is still there when the ambulance finds them the next morning.   

 


End file.
